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About Geyser Judith Basin Times (Geyser, Mont.) 1911-1920 | View This Issue
Geyser Judith Basin Times (Geyser, Mont.), 04 Feb. 1916, located at <http://montananewspapers.org/lccn/sn85053135/1916-02-04/ed-1/seq-2/>, image provided by MONTANA NEWSPAPERS, Montana Historical Society, Helena, Montana.
GEYSER TUDITII BASIN TIMES OLD SOIDIED rov THE LITrIE BUGLER AS HE LOOKED IN '61 illiam F. Johnston went to war at the age of eleven years and be- came a plains fighter afterward. His reflections, here set down, point a moral and adorn a tale vY (This \human document - is published as one no the most remarkable letters we ever read It was not Intended for publication originally. but was written by Mr. Johnston. who lives in tbe an Sob:Derr Home, to ittii (trot her, at ri yob tor ill Nebraska. r cAmtv , \\ Y DEAR Brother George. Your letter of November 27 is at hand, and It warms my itl,i heart to think my little brother its eo inter- ested in anything pertaining to my rather uneventful past Of all things I despise. 'tie an egotist However, as you wish to know sone , hing about your brother Billy's rally experience. I don't see how I can help telling. I Was born June 18, IMO, in Detroit. Mich., and when the Civil war broke out in 1861. I was going to school, with no thought of anything hot a good time and Mischief: In July, 1861. when one month past eleven years of age, I offered my services in the Ninth Michigan infantry, Company \ii.\ Cap- tain Adams in command, which was quartered at Fort Wayne. Of course, I ran away from school to enlist, and mother WRB almost crazy before they found out where I was. They kept me some two weeks at the fort as a drummer boy. I was so short my drum would not clear the ground when marching, and I had got into so much mischief hi that time that a sergeant took me to the port gate. took me over his knee and spanked me with a leather belt, anti told me to beat it for home anti mother, which I did. I have always thought my father told them what to do with me. Well father whipped me and mother cried over me, and as I Lad got peppered with lice while at the fort. I was made to sleep in the barn for a week, until cleaned up. But the fife and drum were too much for me, and in July. when twelve years and a month old. 1862, I again ran away from home and enlisted in the Twenty-fourth Michigan infantry which was quartered on the old fair grounds in Detroit. I beat the drum and played the devil for ten days, when I was again taken to the guard line and invited to skip. With the in- vitation went some kicks and cuffs I have not for- gotten yet. But the boys were not to blame for the rough treatment they gave me as my father had quietly put them up to it, trying to make me tired of soldiering. My brothers and sisters thought I was a hero, father thought I was a devil, but mother thought I was just her own little Billy just the same. But go to school I would not! There was too much attraction on the street, so in Comber, 1862, my mother packed a little trunk of clothing, and they started me for the Lansing Agricultural college Well things began to happen then. I arrived at the school in the afternoon of Saturday. October 9, and was to have been examined and put into my classes Monday morning. I might say this was the extent of my college education, and the last of my schooling. Sunday morning Mr. Tibbets, who kept the boarding house for the school, and his wife, left for the day to make a visit. Milton Ward of De- troit, who was at the school at the time, and my- self wehi boon companions, having been acquaint- ed in Detroit. Sunday morning. Milton and I hooked away, and went up to Lansing, as I remember it, a couple of miles away. Milt always had money, and was four or five years older than I. Ile got a big bag of candy and a bottle a wine. We went out to the school for a lark After dinner Milt and I and another boy and three or four little girls who were visiting boys at the school, got together in a COPYRIGHT DV WM 'AFER UNION big room upstairs, and what a time we did have: Mr. Tibbits and his wye came home and found the lot of us all asleep; some on the Boor, some on the bed, but all of us tipsy and sick from the wine. ‘Vas there anything dein.- then? I should say yes! This whole lark was laid at my door. I wac locked In a room to be kept until Monday, when I was to tie Rent back home to my parents. I did not dare go home, as father would certainly have tried, at least, to whip some of the meanness out of me, for I had about used up his patience. So after the house had got Quiet at night. I dropped out the window and hiked for Lansing. They were then recruiting for the Sixth Michigan cavalry. 1 told the recruiting officer I had no mother or father, that I sold pears and did odd jobs for a living, and swore I was eighteen years old. Sure. he knew better, but they enlisted me regularly as a bugler, and _assigned me to Company G, Sixth - Michigan cavalry. I was twelve 'years. three months and twenty-three days old, and was in my third enlistment. but this WWI the first time I was mustered In. Alf Madden enlisted with me. I was sent to Grand Rapids where the regiment was camped while being recruited to its full strength. We were mustered into the service there. The life that we led the oMcers of Company G was anything but pleasant. In Washington. we camped for a time on Meri- den hill from which place we made our first hike. And we tasted war, when we went to Falmouth and skirmished with Moseby's guerrillas. We had the opportunity of trading coffee for tobacco with the Confederate pickets. A white handkerchief on the end of a saber was the signal to stop shooting while the trade was being made between the \Reim\ on the Fredericksburg side of the Rap- pahannock river and us \Yanks\ on the Falmouth side. I must say I never knew of any advantage being taken to shoot a fellow while the trade was being made. In the early spring of 1863. no regi- ment was kept more busy than the Sixth Michigan looking out for Moseby and his men. We always had them, but never got them to any great ex- tent. eloseby was a wonder From then to the time I was taken prisoner we were in eighteen battles and minor engage- ments between June 30 to October IL 1863. The Little Bugler never lost a day. but did lose lots of meals in that time On October 11, 1863, at Brandy station, my horse was shot from under me, and 1 ens taken pris- oner. Our regiment was charging through a regi- ment of enemy cavalry that had got in between the main column and the rear geard, when my horse was struck by a piece of shell between the knee and hoof, throwing Inc heels over appetite some feet over his head. I was cut anti bruised by the feet of the charging troopers, who were be- hind. When I tinally got up le was to look into the barrel of what appeared to me to be a cannon. but in fact was only a .45 Colt, and a fellow in a gray suit was telling me to strip! Ile took my shoes and pants, and darn him. he could not wear either of them; he was so much larger than I. I Was taken with a trainload of other prbioners to Richmond, Va.. but on the way had trailed off my blouse for something to eat. We were divided lip in bunches after arriving at Richmond. Destiny sent nie to old Libby prison, and later to Belle late I had no pants, shoes or hat One of the older men hail given me an old coat. The guard would Issue us a few sticks of wood in the evening. We burned our fires as long as possible, and when the fires had burned out to coals we scattered the coals over the ground to warm it, and then would THE LITTLE BUGLER IN A SOLDIERS' HOME TODAY lie down to sleep, stretched in long lines of any number of men, all curled up spoon fashion, as (-lose together as possible. I lay down on the end of the line one cold night when soon a poor fellow came and snuggled up to me. Along in the early morning when he should have turned to warm my back, he did not mot e I got up on my elbow and pulled his nose. Ile was dead. It was the most frightful experience I ever had. Our dead were usually relieved of any good clothing they may have had on to be used by those who were almost naked. I had still on what was left of a shirt and pair of drawers that I had worn for almost a year. Can you realize or im- agine how little of either were left? I went down to the dead line one morning and saw a body on which was a fine shirt of blue cashmere cloth. I went to the gate and asked the officer of the Con- federate guard, an old man, it I might remove the shirt from that body to wear myself. - My poor boy.\ he said, and gave permission. with tears running down his wrinkled cheeks, to take the shirt. - A red -whiskered, spindle-shanked, low-down fellow from Wisconsin that I was chumming with, and whom I had kept alive by stealing grub Mr him to eat, stole that shirt from me. I lost a silver mine in Colorado years ago that sold afterwards for three hundred thousand dollars, but it did not hurt so badly as the loss of that shirt. Shortly after this, there was a parole of sick and disabled men agreed on by the governments. I got out and walked aboard our transport at Sa- vannah, the raggedest-looking kid that ever left that city. What few troops there were in that transport just stood and cried when they saw our boys. This was the nineteenth of November, 1864. At Annapolis I got my back pay, ration money and clothing money for the time I had been pris- oner. amounting to some $300. with a furlough for thirty days. I started for Detroit. I can't tell you all that happened on the trip. but I got home broke after a week or ten days on the road. Father killed the fatted calf, mother had it cooked, and I was made much of by everybody, for I had been reported dead long ago, and they had preached a memorial sermon for me, telling what a good little boy I had been. I came home and spoiled it all. After a few days at home I went to dismounted camp at Harper's Ferry and from the camp was returned to my regiment, then in Washington waiting to take part in the grand review, after which we were sent to Fort Leavenworth. Here I was discharged and the regiment sent out on the plains after Indians. I went to Denver in the fall of 1865 with a mule train, before there was a railroad in the moun- tains. I returned to Topeka, Kan., with bull trains, enlisting in the regular army, went to Cali- fornia by way of the isthmus. guarded surveyors in Arizona from the Indians, and fought Indians in Arizona with the First United States cavalry. I made a trip into Mexico with a load of phoney Jewelry. Later I Was arrested as a filibuster spy in Guaymas and was shipwrecked on my trip from Guaymas to Mazatlan. Two out of seven were saved after floating around for thirty-six hours. I was shanghaied in San Francisco and taken around Cape Horn to Dublin, which was the most adventurous five months of my life. I came back to my home in 1873, married in 1874 and settled down to be decent. I am now a member of the Michigan Soldiers' home. Uncle Sam is trying his best to make me comfortable in my declining years. But neither he nor all the powers that be can make up the ten years worse than lost from my twelfth to twenty-second year, for what I did not learn that was rough in that time I have not learned since and it Is not In the books, MAKING SATISFACTORY PROFIT FROM FARM] — „, —, :%111 . 14e- aa * aa , 4 . • 44* Ideal Farm Buildings and Grounds. (From Weekly Letter, United States De- partment of Agriculture.) Under the conditions which prevail on the average American farm, the op- portunity for making a satisfactory profit varies directly with the number of acres farmed, according to farm management specialists in the depart- ment of agriculture. This statement is substantiated by figures gathered in the course of a survey which has recently been made by the depart- ment of a portion of Chester county, Pennsylvania. This survey, in the opinion of the specialists, emphasizes what has been called \the small -farm policy,” which is discussed at some length in a bulletin Boon to be issued, Farm Management Practice of Ches- ter County, Pennsylvania. In the territory surveyed, farms of from 30 to 40 acres required for each crop acre $15 worth of machinery on an average, as compared with less than $9 worth on farms of 160 acres and over. The small -sized farms need- ed one horse for every nine acres, as compared with one horse for more than 17 acres on the larger holdings. In spite of this increased investment per acre, the small farms were not so well equipped' vrith labor-saving ma- chinery. On the farms of from 13 to 40 acres the average labor income—that is to say, the money which the farmer re- ceives for his year's work after the interest on his investment has been DISORDERS OF THE FAITHFUL DAIRY COW Treatment of Noninfectious Gar - get Is Simple—Infectious Form Is Hard to Cure. (Fly IP. D. HADLEY, Wisconsin College of Agriculture.) Garget makes an appearance every once in a while in cows which appar- ently are In perfect health. The milk in severe cases, is either stringy or otherwise altered in character when drawn and collects a yellowish -colored sediment on standing. In less pro- nounced cases there may be little vis- ible change in the milk, but an exami- nation would reveal a largo number of germs. Noninfectious garget is caused by bruises or other injuries, or by a sud- den congestion of blood in the udder as frequently occurs in heavy milkers - and in heifers at first calving. Af- fected animals usually make a com- plete recovery if given one and a half pounds of epsom salts and their feed is restricted to that of a succulent na- ture. The cause of infectious garget is a germ or germs. When many of them are present in the udder not only is the milk changed as mentioned above, but the udder itself becomes hot and sensitive to the touch. The importance of the infectious form of garget rests in the tact that it is usually not easily cured and hag a tendency to recur. Furthermore the disease is easily conveyed to healthy cows through the medium of the milk- er's hands or contaminated material of any kind, unidas precautions are taken to avoid the transfer of the germs. Temporary relief may be given by bathing the udder with hot water for one-half hour each morning and eve, ning. After thoroughly drying the sur- face of the udder warm cottonseed oil should be rubbed in with the palm of the hand. A complete cure is possible in most cases only by drying tho cow off at once so that her system may be free to fight the disease -producing germs that are present in the udder. Profitable Hog Raising. To make hogs profitable we must provide plenty of range that we may keep their yards clean and sanitary. To be successful a man must be particular with his breeding stock, The breed is of less importance than the surroundings. It will pay any hog owner to dip all of his grcawing pigs at least once a month to keep their skin in good con- dition and free from lice. Support for Ordinary Family. Three or four acres of alfalfa, with an acre devoted to garden truck, and another acre to poultry, and cow pas- ture, with a few cows, a hundred chickens, and three or four brood sows will support the ordinary family of five, with enough left over to pay taxes deducted—was only $240, while on farms of over 160 acres the average was $1,575. From these and other fig- ures which convey the same leaser', the investigators concluded that the small farm, carrying on a general farming business, labors under a fixed ha .dicap that is inherent in its else. This relation of the size of the farm to the opportunity for profit is declared in the bulletin already men- tioned to be of vital interest \becaase of the notion which .so widely pre- vails that the ideal ef American agri- culture is the small farm. Numerous real estate promotion schemes are based on this idea. It is a distinct fallacy, Very small farms are diffi- cult to make successful anywhere, and it is only the exceptional man who is equal to the task. They must al- ways be devoted to the most intensive types of farming, and the products of most kinds of intensive farming fluctuate greatly In volume and price, so that the business is very insecure. The danger is greatly magnified if the small farm is situated a long dis- tance from market, for prices for their products do not have to fall very tar until the transportation charges wipe out all profits, Even In the vicinity of the markets these small farms succeed only in localities where they have distinct advantages for the particular typo of farming 'Melt they follow.\ QUITE IMPORTANT TO APPLY MANURE First Step in Maintenance of Pro- ductive Capacity of Soil— Affords Better Tilth. Farm manure is one of the products of the North Dakota farm that Is often neglected. Manure when properly ap- plied gives good returns. It has been found at the North Dakota experiment station that manure has given a re- turn of $1.40 per load and that was on the heavy Red River valley soils. To secure this result it was applied to a corn crop, which it increased, as well as the wheat crops that followed it. Had it been applied directly to the wheat these good results would likely not have been secured. In fact.It might have brought in the first crop a decrease Instead of the 26 per cent in- crease. At the eLangtion substation it was found that wheat following corn ma- nured, ten loads to the acre, - was increased seven bushels more than wheat on similar corn ground, but not manured. And the next year barley grown on the same land was increased 7 1 / 2 bushels, and the good effects of the manure will extend to one or two more crops. The drier the climate the slower the manure decays and so the good effects from it become available more slowly. When plowed under for corn the nail is well packed on to the manure, which hastens its becoming available. Pasture land that Is to be plowed up soon is a good place to spread the manure. It stimulates the grass, and the manure decays some, so it is In good condition for being worked into the soil and for improving it when plowed under. The pasture also has the advantage that the manure can be spread on it at any time. Meadow that is to be plowed up is also a splendid place for applying the manure. It has been found that better re- turns are secured from the manure when light applications are made. Six to eight loads per acre is a good amount to apply. The application of manure is the cheapest means of returning organic or vegetable matter to the soil, and the maintenance of a good supply of decaying organic matter is the first and most important step In the main tenanco of the productive capacity of the soil. It gives the soil better (11th. increases the availability of the min- eral elements of plant food and Im- proves the water -holding capacity of the soil, in addition to being a source of nitrogen as a plant food.—North Da- kota Experiment Station. Make Progressive Farmer. All success in the cultivation of the soil comes from the application of scientific methods. The application of scientific methods in practical agricul- ture makes of us progressive farmers We aro progressive to the extent of applying scientific methods to our ag- ilcultural work. The application of scientific methods makes us practicaL ov •
